Top Chef tour!

I should be driving to upstate New York right now, but instead I have to pause here and say: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The Top Chef tour was in town today, and I managed to get the very last seat in the first demo. We had Hung Huynh and Richard Blais as the chefs, and they were both in the kitchen during the short pair of demos (each did one dish.) Hung made an Asian shrimp dish with cellophane noodles, and Richard made an awesome salad of tomatoes, peaches, scallions, basil, and cilantro with yuzu/Minus 8 ice wine vinegar dressing with mozzarella "scallops" (just cut liker scallops, not seared or anything, and called scallops just to be funny.) They were funny and personable and took questions (I asked Hung about non-salty components of Asian sauces, and he suggested sugar, honey, lime juice, and tamarind juice.) I wish I'd had a question for Richard, since not many people were asking.

So now I am in fan girl heaven. Alas, they did not have the culinary boner T-shirts, or I would certainly have bought one. They had an intriguing pair of bicycle-powered blenders in front of the tour bus, which did not in fact get used while I was there.

While waiting for the demo I sampled a few wines at the Food and Wine festival, and picked up a couple of bottles of (tasty!)local champagne. It was nice to see all of the Ohio vineyards representin'. I also picked up a ton of fruit at the markets today, including red plums (Methley, or something like that), apricots, peaches, wineberries (a bit like raspberries but more tart), blueberries, blackberries (not black rapsberries!) and cherries. I am in local fruit heaven right now, despite my failure to get raspberries and black raspberries.